Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

Return to Colloquia & Seminar listing

Missions to the Jovian Moon Europa must comply with the icy body standards set by NASA's Office of Planetary Protection. The standards are meant to prevent contamination of liquid water on other planetary bodies by terrestrial organisms. In particular, "the probability of inadvertent contamination of an ocean or other liquid water body must be less than 1/10000 per mission." Given a proposed mission plan, the calculation of this probability must include conservative estimates of poorly known parameters and take into account organism survival and proliferation from the launch pad to the target. Here I discuss the Planetary Protection modeling framework for the Europa Clipper mission and briefly discuss implications for the proposed Europa Lander mission.